


vacation

by TheInternationalAffair



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheInternationalAffair/pseuds/TheInternationalAffair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a rainy day, and Prussia wants to go on a vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vacation

**Author's Note:**

> All I can say is: Blame the Halloween blog update. Thanks, Himaruya. Thanks.  
> Real talk, though, this is the first fic I drafted on physical paper... while listening to a lecture of Cold-War era Germany.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> -TIA/Megu

When Ludwig walks up the stairs to greet his brother this morning, he hears the pitter-patter of rain against the windows and can’t help but imagine the footsteps of ghosts running around the house.

Not that he believes in ghosts. But it’s worth a thought. Certainly when the house feels so quiet for 9 A.M., anyway. If not out of concern but rather out of habit, Ludwig has Gilbert’s morning routine memorized by now. 

By 8 A.M., Gilbert Beilschmidt is up and pacing; by 8:15, the bathroom door is locked while Gilbert sings quite obnoxiously in the shower; by 8:45, the fog on the bathroom mirror has been wiped off and the sounds of scribbling can be heard from Gilbert’s room. Sometime around now some shuffling and moving and be heard as well, resulting in a pile of material sentiment stacked neatly at Ludwig’s door with a note on top, scribbled with much rush and hurry. This was Gilbert’s most recent hobby, though Ludwig had noted much stranger ones. 

There’s none of that today, however. Instead, the bathroom floors are cold, the air is nearly as stiff as Ludwig’s neck, and when Ludwig finally finds his brother, Gilbert is lying sideways in bed, staring blankly across his room as if he hadn’t slept in days. 

The rest of his room is piled up in boxes, all taped without a single wrinkle and labeled with what Ludwig can assume to be the exact contents inside. It’s unusual, but not too far off from anything else Gilbert has tried. And this time Ludwig didn’t have to save him from a horde of angry primary school children.

"Is this another one of your strange new hobbies?" asks Ludwig as soon as he steps into the room, looking around with narrowed eyes.

"Hmph. Funny. But no, it isn’t," comes the reply.

Gilbert doesn’t even try to make an excuse, but moves his head slightly to acknowledge the younger sibling’s presence. Ludwig can feel tension rise in his throat, though he isn’t sure why it’s there.

"It’s not funny," insists Ludwig, not noticing that he’s also nearly bitten off the inside of his mouth, "I swear, I don’t understand you sometimes."

Gilbert tenses his shoulders and relaxes them quickly in an attempt to shrug while lying down. 

"You don’t have to," Gilbert replies quietly, and he slowly gets up and rubs at his left eye with a sleeve pulled over his hands while Ludwig looks on, expression unchanged for both young men. Gilbert lifts his head to take a better look at the younger man, and cracks a tired smile. 

"I know that face when I see it," Gilbert says, "And no. You don’t have to panic about anything. I’m—-I’m." Gilbert’s face falters a bit and his eyes dart down briefly before he looks back up at Ludwig with a sly yet not very confident grin.

"I’m getting ready," proclaims Gilbert.

"For what?" 

The room falls silent again, except for the rain tapping politely onto the rooftop above them. 

"I was thinking," Gilbert’s raspy voice finally breaks the silence, "I was thinking about taking a vacation."

A vacation?

"A vacation!?" Ludwig blurts, "But haven’t you been saying that you feel like you’re just lounging around here? Wouldn’t going on a vacation mean even more lounging around?"

"Yeah," Gilbert responds absently, now with an actual shrug. Something about the elder Beilschmidt’s dismissiveness today turned Ludwig’s stomach into knots.

"You’re right, lil’ bro. I just figured it would do to keep me out of your hair for a while, you know? Let you do your own thing, catch up on all that work and E.U. bullshit of yours, spend more time with the dogs."

He  _does_ have a point. Ludwig does enjoy spending time with the three dogs, all needing particular care and attention. In fact, Ludwig  _has_ been spending an awful amount of time with the (non-nation status) animals of the house so much that he hasn’t noticed what his own brother has been up to. The younger Beilschmidt mentally hits himself in the head for not paying better attention. 

"I’m sorry," mumbles Ludwig at last, now a little caught up in his own thoughts. 

"For what? I’m not mad or anything, and you’re the one doing all the work around here nowadays," replies Gilbert, who now wrinkles his nose at one of his legs. Ludwig doesn’t look up however, and is still standing awkwardly in the middle of Gilbert’s towers of cardboard boxes trying to figure out that strange discomfort nagging in the back of his head. 

Whatever it is, Gilbert senses it, and pats the space on his bed next to him as an invitation for Ludwig to sit next to him.

"Oh, come off it, don’t be such a worrywart or you’ll end up like Rod. That’s the whole reason why I’m the one who raised you in the first place, y’know," Gilbert looks at Ludwig fondly as he awkwardly sits down on the bed. "I’ll have fun, I’ll go travel for fun—I’ve always kind of liked that. Gonna get drunk and shit, or go, I don’t fucking know. I’ll go treasure hunting. That sounds pretty fucking awesome."

"You’ll get yourself killed, that’s what," Ludwig mumbles back, now staring at what looks like bandage scraps that Gilbert neglected to pick up from the ground. He looks back up at the boxes, wondering if Gilbert ran out of packing tape for the boxes. He didn’t. 

"You won’t be," deadpans Gilbert, pretending that Ludwig is actually paying attention to him before finally patting Ludwig on the back, wincing a little when he puts weight on his left foot. Ludwig suddenly remembers the other day when he heard Gilbert yelp over "tripping over some stupid fucking wire up here" (and something about his left foot),  but didn’t figure it to be anything too severe. Even after the mid-20th century Gilbert is still abnormally strong, and even if he had broken something, wouldn’t it have healed by now, anyway? Besides, compared to say, Alfred or himself, Gilbert was getting quite old for a strong ex-nation. Other older nations had complained of worse growing pains. 

"Yeah." Ludwig hears Gilbert trying to reassure himself now, bringing Ludwig’s attention back to his brother, "I’ll go to China, talk to Yao. See Kiku again. Maybe I’ll hang out with Feliks."

"I thought you two didn’t like each other," Ludwig points out.

"Hate’s a strong word, buddy. And it’s a vacation, I can do what I want." Gilbert flops back onto the bed."It’s like retirement—for young, cooler people, I mean—hah. Say, Lud, what would we look like as grandpas? Grandpas on retirement, I mean. We’d look pretty cool, right? Silver’s a good color on you, Lud, runs in the famil-"

"Would you please stop talking like that, I am starting to get concerned!" snaps Ludwig, soon instantly regretting doing so when he sees Gilbert’s shoulders go limp. 

Ludwig speaks up again in a much calmer tone. “No offense, but you’re talking as if you’re about to die right now.”

"Me? Die?" Gilbert scoffs half-heartedly. "You’ve been working too much, Ludwig. Maybe you need a vacation, too."

Letting his shoulders loosen up, Ludwig sighs. “Maybe. I just don’t want you to do anything too life-threatening.”

"If I wasn’t doing something fuckin’ nuts, would I still be your awesome older brother?" Gilbert cracks. He even smiles at his own joke, someone he hadn’t done this entire conversations. It’s rewarded with a genuine laugh from Ludwig.

"And would I be your brother if I wasn’t worrying about you all the time?" retorts Ludwig.

"Touche, touche. Well." Gilbert slowly stands up to crack his back, and turns back to face Ludwig, that usual smug expression now back on the older brother’s face.

"I’m going to pig out. Not waking up at the right time really screws with my appetite," says Gilbert, now looking much more alert than he did moments ago.

"Good. Let me know how that vacation goes— when you leave, that is," Ludwig says, getting comfortable in Gilbert’s bed, something that Gilbert usually had to nag at him to do for hours until Ludwig would step away from his work and relax a bit. But this time it just seemed to make sense to stay there.

Gilbert turns around, and smiles when he sees Ludwig now covering his legs with a plaid red duvet.

"I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes, Lud. And I’ll tell you when I go on that vacation. Maybe you’ll come with me for part of it."

And with that, Gilbert walks out of the room and downstairs, and Ludwig suddenly notices something he’d missed the last few days— Gilbert is limping slightly, his left foot dragged across the carpet. Ludwig had ignored it recently when he thought Gilbert was just loafing around, but—

The ghosts now knock at every wall of the house, and Ludwig looks at the nearest window to see droplets swimming down the glass. He really doesn’t believe in ghosts, still. But for a moment he just might.

 


End file.
